On taking up Mr. Maurice's dedication of his Sermons on Sacrifice, one is tempted to say, " What next?" But though Mr. Maurice shows vivid marks, in some places of the Sermons, of great earnestness for purity towards God-our praise must stop here. There always seems something that is not fully expressed. If he is able to define and bring out distinctly what his doctrine is, let him; because on the material point of the value and character of the person of 'the Son of God, he is vague if not enigmatical, because there is something in reserve. This feeling is left on our minds. It might cover much worse than seems. The process by which he has thrown together the items of his creed is remarkable. The sects are generally the complements of one another's defects. He seems to have picked out all their defects and thrown. them together for his special confession. The atonement of Irving which destroyed all ground of substitution-the inward light of the Friends which gave to the heathen as much share of this, as the possessor of Christ by faith; and curiously satisfies himself with the establishment, because it contains space for every shade of this light, in its varied measure of development. We remember a Roman Catholic Convert, who grew in intelligence beyond his first teachers, and owned that there was much contrary to the word of God in the establishment, into which he had recanted, but said that the articles claimed no man's belief, beyond what could be proved by Scripture, and therefore that he was not bound by what he found in his new home. We recollect' the answer given. " It is a pity the Roman Catholic had not such an article; you might have staid among them still." That Mr. Maurice's conclusions are on defective grounds of knowledge of what is proffered in Scripture is manifest. He had formed a moral system of his own, 'and to this Scripture was to bow. Not setting out with the word, or in subjection to it, he picks up the members of his creed here and there, and touches on the German line of subjective religion, and then Scripture is to walk in his train, and the forms of his Church Services, are to speak the same in its "motley" application; an account of it which nobody ever thought of before, and at which the compilers would wonder. The juxtaposition in which he puts the English and Scotch confessions is remarkable and gives occasion to the discovery of the ground-work of his theology, viz. that man only requires mending and not remaking. viz., system founded on this must re-adapt everything; and meaning to be religious he has much on his hands. May God make those who believe by grace come into quick apprehension of the truth, viz., that the house is leprous and must be pulled down, and that the building anew in the second Adam, in resurrection, is the mind of God, in the gospel of His grace, and that all His dispensations of truth wind up in this.
(* These pages are hardly in accordance with the ordinary style and object of this work, but the position of Mr. Maurice, with the currency and popularity of the doctrine of which his works are the exponent, are the excuse. Such a paper may not be necessary as a safeguard to the ordinary readers of the Present Testimony, but it may let them know what is abroad, and become of some service by the blessing of God, in the contradiction of it.-Ed.)
This truth will always expose, as it does in Mr. Maurice's system, the whole weight of the evil of religion, and the notions of God, being subjective, instead of having Himself as necessarily the object of every creature (made to apprehend Him), as revealed by Himself. His character revealed by Himself determines the offense in which the Sinner stands. It is not the comparison of the racy Scot and the frame of an article in the establishment. Truth presents two facts-the nature of God (and it is unavoidably perfect), and departure from that created position which had proceeded from the hands of God. With this original difference-one was from the first in creature fallibility, though not having failed; and the other unavoidably perfect as divine Creator. If failure comes in, there is no remedy in the way of recovery. The covenant whereby man is erect is broken; and we come to the saving truth, that there is none good but God. THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS is the saving confession of deliverance and stability. Partial views of divine truth must ever create confusion. Such men as Mr. Maurice must make up for what they do not see. They have, neither sense of the divine greatness nor of man's incapacity to meet it. But considering it as the defectiveness of view, we would liken it to a man approaching the periphery of a circle from which the alleys all run up to its center. He can see but one alley full home to the center at once, the next partially, but the greater number not at all. In like manner any man standing on the opposite side or facing any one of the alleys,- his conclusions are equally partial and all fallacious. The only person seeing all in proportion is he that stands at the center and in this case (i.e. of divine truth and its relations), the only center is God, and being at the center with God. So placed, he sees the divine counsels proceeding from the same center, even from God Himself, in just proportion, and just relationship to one another. Apparent contrarities always harmonize in the center from which they proceed. The righteousness of God and the goodness of God-mercy, truth-all that is divine, all that is divinely moral, all meet perfectly in God as manifested in Christ, to and for man, to the glory of God.
The truth is, as to Mr. Maurice-there is a seeking to accommodate that which is divine to man's corrupt reason and condition, rendering all revelation futile, by taking all direct intent from its declarations and statements. This wrong takes place under the correction of his use of revelation, and the correction of other men's partial knowledge of it. The working of the mystery of iniquity was seen by the spiritual eye of one apostle, and the persons of it by another. Their judgment did not separate the beginning from its results. Heathen warning is not enough-
"Principiis obsta, sero medicina paratur
Cum mala per longas convaluere morass."
Falsified truth is more demoralizing, and eventually is fuller opposition to God than heathenism has reached. We will try one place. In describing Abraham's position and relation to God, he says: " A man who has waited long for some good which has seemed to him more blessed each day that has not brought it to him, and yet has seemed each day more improbable—who has been sure from the first, if ever came, it must be a gift from one who watched over him and cared for him, and who, for that very reason, has gone on trusting that he shall receive it, yet growing in trust as the natural difficulties grew more insurmountable-such a man, when the dream of his heart becomes a substantial reality, has a sense of grateful joy which turns to pain, which is actually oppressive till it finds some outlet. Yet what outlet can it find? what can it do for the giver more than rejoice and wonder at the gift -more than say, 'It is thine.'"
Nothing, perhaps; but how can he say that? How can he utter what he means to one who he knows is the source of all he has, and can need nothing from him? What can he offer? a mere sign and symbol. "A sheep, which he would slay for his own food, and which he would not miss out of his own flock? Or a miserable sample of the fruits which the earth is pouring out to him? It must surely be something better, more precious than any of them. His own heart seems to scorn such presents: must not the heart of Him to whom He brings them?
" The description I have given is the description which in simpler, truer language, the book of Genesis has given of Abraham. He has waited, longed, feared, trusted, received. The child has come to him in his old age-a child to whom blessings are attached, which he cannot measure, which stretch into the farthest future. From him are to come as many as the stars or as the sands. It is indeed a child of laughter and joy. He has lived for this; as he looks upon it, it appears to him the pledge of an infinite interminable life. The child has brought him nearer to God; though he has believed in Him so long, it is now as if he believed in Him for the first time, so much is he carried out of himself; such a vision has he of One who orders ages past and to come, and yet is interested for him, is interested for the feeblest of those whom He has made. Out of such things comes the craving for the power to make some sacrifice, a sacrifice that shall not be nominal but real.
" Many strange and perplexing thoughts invaded men's minds as they invade men's minds now. When they became very tormenting, then as now, people betook themselves to some wise man. They asked what do these thoughts mean, whence do they come, and what are we to do in consequence of them? They got various answers. The answers in different places shaped themselves into different rules and maxims; forms and services of devotion were grounded upon them; above all, sacrifices were suggested which might satisfy the desire of the creature, perhaps might satisfy the demands of his ruler. The book of Genesis says, 'GOD did tempt Abraham.' It leads us back to the source from which the thoughts which were working in his mind were derived. It says broadly and distinctly-this seed did not drop by accident into the patriarch's mind-it was not self-sown. It was not put into him by the suggestions of some of his fellows. It was part of the discipline to which he was subjected that these questions should be excited in him. It was his Divine Teacher who led him to the terrible conclusion- 'The sacrifice that I must offer is that very gift which has caused all my joy.'" Enough! Let a common intelligent, unsophisticated mind, read the account in Genesis. It matters not what objection he may make, but could any such give the account of what is written in Genesis that Mr. Maurice has done? Was there ever such unaccountable trash? Is it worth pulling to pieces? We see no end in Mr. Maurice's paraphrase but the attempt to show that God was not in it at all. The Divine Teacher is the subjective faculty; that is, at the bottom of it. " GOD is not in all his thoughts."
Mr. Maurice has become famous by being dismissed a professorship-not for the confession of Christ, but for a most prolific spawning of his ideas of the perfectibility of man. He is only dangerous because he falls in with the current that is hurrying men away from God. I say to the unbelieving student of the bible (if there is need to say anything), was there ever more unhallowed fire offered as incense to God since the sons of Aaron died for that sin before the Lord? Will not Mr. Maurice leave one sacred feeling to hang about Abraham's offering up his son, whom also he received back in the figure of resurrection? God did tempt Abraham-put him to proof, as we should say, in easier terms of paraphrase according to the use of vulgar terms. "And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest; and get thee into the land of Moriah." We need not copy what immediately follows -it is well known. But we find further on the angel of the Lord calling to him from heaven, who says: " Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing. thou }last not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me." God here put Abraham to proof, and Abraham, by grace, stood good in the proof, namely in his obedience to God, and reliance on His word and promises as to Isaac. What puerile neology is Mr. Maurice's-" The divine teacher suggests"-the way of fulfilling his gratitude for the son given him, that Abraham was to offer up his son to death as a way of pleasing himself, in return for the grace of God in giving him the same son, in a perpetual purpose of futurity; not in confidence, that we hear from Mr. Maurice, that the WORD OF GOD ensured his being kept to him through death. What miserable driveling in order to avoid the plain intent and plain expression of the word handed down to us. Why does Mr. Maurice go by it at all? We are sure that the time will come when he will not, unless by his turning through grace to the obedience of faith, of which his entire work is an avoidance.
There is a page of Mr. Maurice's we did not note and cannot find again, in which he most touchingly exposes that corruption of heart and thought, in speaking which his eyes must have fallen to the ground, and asks if we are to hold the doctrine of sacrifice and satisfaction for sin by the death of Christ, and to leave all this untouched. It was a sentence for which every one who knows the plague of his own heart and its fruits, and confesses it, must love him as one would a poor Carmelite undertaking his penance and prayers, and likewise with the hope of purifying his heart thereby, and in true desire thereto. Mr. Maurice may be surprised at finding himself standing in this comparison. We believe him to be standing in the far worse predicament of the two. God loves them both in the intent. God loved Cornelius, who nevertheless had yet to hear words by which he might be saved. The Carmelite hardly stands as one departing from light; Mr. Maurice does-that is the difference between them. But what would interest us in Mr. Maurice is his desire after sanctity; but there was no need for his rejecting the corner• stone of the faith, in the rejection of the substitution of Christ for the sinner in death; when there lay, a few steps further on, more than he seeks, in the partaking of Christ in life as risen. But will what he has fallen back upon bring him to the desired haven? Ah! no. Human perfectibility by a universal i inward light, without being individually cleansed by the blood-without the, washing of regeneration in the faith of Jesus risen, and without the renewing of the Holy Ghost for failure, will find itself dying M. its sins, and make the stream yet broader of human departure, to fall at last into the hands, power, and direction of the enemy.
We took his explanation of Abraham's sacrifice as a palpably offensive example of the faith of the Son of God dying for sinners (and raised again, which he seems to have forgotten) being explained away by strained and gross perversion of the word of revelation.
Let us now see what the sanctity of the new nature in Christ, according to Mr. Maurice, is to produce. " When St. Paul preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he preached, that in obedience, humiliation, and sacrifice dwelt the mighty conquering power, that power against which no other in heaven or earth could measure itself. And his words have not been confuted by the experience of ages; they have been confirmed by facts, which seem at first sight to be most at war with them. Do you ask why the soldiers of Islam in the first centuries after Mahomet or in any subsequent centuries, prevailed against those who had the sign of the cross on their banners? The only answer that can be given is; that there was more of this thought and mind of Christ, more of humiliation and obedience and sacrifice in them than there was in their opponents. They prevailed not through their denial of Him, but through their implicit recognition of Him. So far as they had zeal, faith, and union-so far as they sought to magnify God's name and to give up themselves, they were His soldiers and not the prophet's; they succeeded because the incarnate Son of God was highly exalted, because there was a name given him above every name." To continue the quotation would be of no use, as I am convinced it would be unintelligible. But there is one sentence shortly following the above, inconceivable as it is for any possible purpose in the matter, we must give. Contradictions or contraries may elucidate something to somebody. It is this The will that rules the universe, the will that has triumphed and does triumph, is all expressed and gathered up in the Lamb that was slain." We confess all our senses are turned topsy-turvy. He goes on:—, "The unconscious creation and all its energies and impulses, refer themselves to the name of Jesus." This last paragraph we must leave as a wonder to readers, unless we find in it the figurative language of the psalmist, who says that "The floods clap their hands, and the trees rejoice before Jehovah." As to "the will that has triumphed and does triumph," we humbly think that Mr. Maurice has mistaken the devil for God. It is the most fearfully rapid growth, and ripening to evil, of mistaken principles we ever witnessed in the mind of man. The willful king of Daniel cannot but come into our mind: " And the king shall do according to his will, and he shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every God, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished."
"Adam was the head of the creation; he fell, and all fell in him and with him. Satan having the upper hand of Adam, all is fallen under the power of Satan, who fills the world with evil, and who governs by the passions of man."
Is not this a truer account of the state of things. But we must not lose sight of the oriental Christians and the followers of Islam. It would be dangerous to agree with Mr. Maurice in anything, but he will not differ from us when we say that the former were effeminate, immoral, and idolatrous; that they bore no testimony to Christ's name, and were judged of God in their evil. Corruptio optima est pessima. Perhaps Mr. Maurice does not know that the learned, Mede (quoted, we believe, by Foster in his Mahometanism Unveiled) judged the Mahometan to be duly considered a Christian sect; so he is not put to the shift of calling them followers of Islam, but of the Lamb slain! We certainly read of the judgment of the oriental Christians, whose worthlessness was come to the full. We read also of the end of Babylon, the mystic Babylon, " her sins had reached unto heaven, and in one hour her judgment came;" and we hear that the mighty angel cried, " Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird." In the case of Babylon, it is the empire and the ten kings that make the great city desolate. Now Babylon is not the oriental Christians, but the occidental ones sunk in corruption. " And strong is the Lord God that judgeth her, but His instruments, as the sword of His vengeance, what are they?" "They shall make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire;" and take possession too, and be bolder than the followers of Islam. When they have done this, they then shall make war with the Lamb. "What zeal, faith and union" will they manifest; " with all the energies and impulses of unconscious creatures." " The name of Jesus is the name to which all the intelligences of the earth refer themselves!" The only reason that Mr. Maurice would give, nay, has given to the question why the followers of Islam overcame the oriental Christians at one hour, or would give, whoever were the conquerors at another, is, " that there was more of this thought or mind of Christ, more of humiliation and obedience arid sacrifice in them than there was in their opponents."
What words can we use for such pestilential mockery of God? Would to God Mr. Maurice could see what comes of this mismatching of truth, this change of bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter, and of those who persuade men so. Are the energies and impulses of unconsciousness, and humiliation and obedience and sacrifice to be found in the present followers of Islam-with the waning protestantism of England, and infidel catholic France; or otherwise in the Russian? Which have the most inward light by which they shall conquer; or are Mr. Maurice's sympathies with one side or the other in a war of opinion? We protest before God, we never heard anything so disgustingly dishonoring to the Spirit of God, and to the Holy Child Jesus, whose reign shall bring in on earth, (of heaven and its hope let us not here speak), peace and goodwill among men! Come Lord Jesus! may the soul well exclaim, if it were only for this.
We do feel called on to offer to Mr. Maurice, and others, who may have been his readers, some other thoughts, if by His grace God may deliver him or some one out of the snare of the Devil, into which his writings surely conduct any one that gives his ear to them. Is there nothing better than what he has brought forward, given us?
Whatever course we can trace in Mr. Maurice's mind, which would seem to excuse him, (as the fault of one person, is sometimes the palliation for the fault of another,) yet with the word of GOD in his hand, and an unchecked use of it, so perverse a departure from it is fearful.—" The words that I speak" says the Lord, " shall judge you."
Have you believed on the name of the Son of God? What is the salvation that he brings? We do feel greatly the guilt of those, who (to commend themselves and the ordinances, they would persuade people to be specially in their hands, as necessary to salvation instead of as secondary to its enjoyment), deaden and would forbid every lively sentiment to God, to put themselves and their solemnities in His place, yet can this excuse those who displace the Spirit of God, equally and as fatally, by introducing again the energies and the willfulness of the natural man, and call it of God?- God is not mocked by either. The first Adam having achieved his independence of his Creator, by the advice and suggestion of the enemy became as God; but a poor and sorry God! for death followed his sin. God in His abundant compassions undertook the re-creation of his fallen likeness and gave HIS ONLY-BEGOTTEN not to us as incarnate now, (that would be " to know Him in the flesh") but as crucified and RISEN, the LIFE of those that believe on His name, and the least of those who join themselves to Christ thus known, who love Him shall shine in His glory. The believer is made partaker of Christ! of Christ risen-the NEW MAN. He is created anew in Christ Jesus. We cannot neologize we believe. -But wherein and what is the gift, and the fruits, and the manner of its exercise. I speak not now of what Christ is by imputation for righteousness to the forgiveness of sins, but the gift of Himself, as life and righteousness unto everlasting life. This is something different from " the energies and impulses of the unconscious creature." "I know Him whom, I have believed," says St. Paul, The Elysium and hour is of the followers of Islam find no place here. But sacrifice, humiliation, and the cross do find place. If life, as it does (and life brings consciousness to the creature), precedes, in the order of the gift of God, death, yet death again precedes the abounding of life, i.e., sacrifice, humiliation, and the cross, precede the abounding of life. " If ye through the SPIRIT (not unconsciously, or as an anchorite, either), do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live," i.e., the risen Christ shall abound in you; " Christ in you the hope of glory." As far as the negative goes, we quote Peter.- "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh, hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men but to the will of God." Or as St. Paul, " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, and be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." Or the same apostle in his epistle to the Colossians, if ye then be dead with Christ, let all the ordinances that belonged to the covenant with the Jew, in the flesh cease to you, " If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, let your affections be set on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory-mortify therefore," etc. And, " Ye have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge, (not in unconsciousness), in the image of Him who created him." Again, "Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith." We are unwilling to stop quoting till we reach the example of Christ "true in us and in Him." "If we have become planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also plants of the resurrection" (see Greek). We hear of Him, "who endured the cross, and despised the shame," as a witness to God for our example, "and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." And we bring forward lastly, the place in Phil. 2 "Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to loe equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took on Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath also highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father"! Now is there a conscience that allows the truth of Scripture, that can stand with Mr. Maurice and his idea of the nature of the exaltation of Jesus, or of those who walk in Him? If there is let them give up the word entirely.-Well! Sad indeed for them, but they cannot hold to Mr. Maurice and to the Bible too. We have the cross sacrifice humiliation in truth, and exaltation to follow; but the cross sacrifice and humiliation is to be applied to everything in man born of Adam, and exaltation, to its being brought low in grace at the coming of the Lord Jesus. We have said we might feel some excuse for Mr. Maurice, because of the neglect of doctrine of this kind by so many-with antinomian result, too, in some measure. The "works of faith" are such as humiliation and the cross, but Mr. Maurice had the Scripture as well as we.
But why should we, because we have all this fullness, throw away the substitution of Christ for the sinner on the cross before God; but it was too apparent in the word to be got rid of. "Here the case," says he, "of the old covenant is closed;" that is, that all the types given in the Old Testament are, when we come to the New, to go for nothing! Admirable neological logic! Let men be consistent and cast the word away, and then act with a will full of "triumph," or save their souls by the obedience of faith in receiving it. Grant it, O God!
We do not quarrel so much with the heavenly things to be purified with better sacrifices than the legal sacrifices are, those sanctified by the will of God; but he has taken an epistle written in a levitical sense, bringing in wonderful truth in its proper place, and we hear that by one sacrifice they have been perfected forever. Deliverance it was from dead works, by Him who by the Holy Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, to purge our conscience from them to serve the living God. The typical substitution was put aside by the real substitution. He died the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Judgment for sin was passed upon Him. We that believe are dead in Him. He that is dead hath been freed [justified, see Greek] from sin; we were dead with Him, and the judgment is past, and we are alive in the same Jesus, risen from the grave. " He loved me and gave Himself for me," says St. Paul. Death must precede, but rising again was more than the death.
All this thought, which puts us in God's presence free in Christ and unto life, even the life that is in resurrection truth and power, is lost to Mr. Maurice. He is in the culmen of his subject, in the mire of sunken humanity. We do hear of the empire that is to rise out of the bottomless pit, and to such will humanity come, unconscious of the bonds in which it is held, and unconscious of what "God has wrought in Christ for them that believe, when He raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory."
Can we return to consider the subjects in Mr. Maurice's book that we in our last division started from? It is not possible; but we put before him and his readers in respect of those he hag chosen for his heroes a few verses of the Revelation:-" And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and spewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God:.
And the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.... And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE."